How can I integrate ScienceDirect content into my website?

If your library needs programmatic (i.e., automated) access to the content on ScienceDirect and other Elsevier web-based databases, Elsevier can support you. We have developed complimentary services that are specifically designed to support machine-to-machine access, including a comprehensive suite of APIs and content syndication services. In order to ensure stability and maintain the performance of our platforms, we recommend that you (or your chosen vendor) use these services for automating access to Elsevier content.

Additionally, we have policies and technical measures in place to prevent crawling by robots or other mechanized devices to ensure accurate usage reporting. Web crawling is an inefficient method of harvesting large quantities of content from sites, and imposes a high volume burden on systems that interferes with access for human users in the research community. Read more about Efficient, Automatic Web Resource Harvesting.

Improving content discovery and use

To aid content discovery for your library’s users, we also partner with major search engines such as Google/Google Scholar, Microsoft Academic Search and others to enable them to index our content.

If your organization would like to use our services to index full text and bibliographic data from ScienceDirect (or other Elsevier databases) in order to build indexes that recreate navigational schemes to Elsevier content on your organization’s local server(s), please contact your Elsevier Account Manager for an overview of the solutions we provide.

Elsevier also offers services for delivering publication metadata including bibliographic information and abstracts for inclusion in other (non-Elsevier) A&I databases, such as those offered by agents and aggregators.

Using ScienceDirect for text and data mining

We recognize that some of our customers want to perform text or data mining of Elsevier content, and we encourage you to do so. To enable such functionality (and ensure mining activities are not falsely identified as crawling), please discuss your content mining needs with your Elsevier Account Manager.

If you are a researcher or developer and you would like to use ScienceDirect data to build applications, perform text or data mining, or for other uses, please go to dev.elsevier.com to learn more, or contact your institution's library staff for assistance. Text and data mining options are specified in our policies and on our Elsevier Developers Portal.

APIs: Including ScienceDirect on your sites or in applications

ScienceDirect offers a wide range of APIs that allow integration of article- and title-level data into your own sites and applications, such as federated search tools, widgets and library catalogs.  Learn more about using ScienceDirect APIs.

XML Gateway: Including ScienceDirect in your library’s search portal

Federated searching (also known as meta-searching, cross-searching or broadcast searching) uses a single portal to simultaneously search through and retrieve results from multiple online resources. Many libraries deploy such portals and may need to include ScienceDirect publications in users’ search results.

ScienceDirect offers an XML gateway (together with Scopus) to target Elsevier content from your federated search portal.

You can set up your library's search portal to target ScienceDirect (and Scopus) as long as:

• Your Elsevier agreement includes a federated search clause;
• Your search portal is provided by a vendor that has enabled its products for the ScienceDirect (and Scopus) XML gateway.

Some of the portals that support ScienceDirect and Scopus are listed below. Please ask your vendor for instructions on or assistance with setting up your portal in the XML gateway. We welcome new partners, so if your vendor of choice is not listed, ask them to contact [email protected] about developing federated search support for your library.

• 360 Search, ProQuest
• Archimed Library Management Software
• Converis, Thomson Reuters
• Cosmotron Advanced Rapid Library
• EBSCO Discovery Service
• Encore Discovery Solution, Innovative Interfaces Inc.
• Explorit, Deep Web Technologies
• Inno-360 Innovation Management Software
• MetaLib v3.12 or higher, ExLibris
• MuseGlobal and partners
• Qwam E-content Server, Portail de I’IE